She looked at him like he was an idiot and waved a hand down the line. Right, he was in a line of planes. “Do you have enough to get back to the city before you refuel? Say yes, because we charge un cojón if you buy fuel here on the jungle strip.”
“Si, gracias.”
Melissa would wager Richie was just as glad not having to pay for fuel with one of his nuts.
The fueler drove off without any other reply except a look that Melissa would rather the woman hadn’t given to Richie.
“Damn it, Richie,” Chad protested. “A woman looks like that and you just let her drive away?”
“But we don’t need the fuel.”
“That’s not the point I—” Chad slapped him on the shoulder in what appeared to be a friendly enough fashion. “Never mind, buddy.”
Melissa appreciated the newly revealed aspect of Richie’s tunnel vision. He hadn’t even noticed that the woman was particularly attractive or had been eyeing him.
“Hallo,” a man called as he approached from along the line of parked planes. It was the tall, white man with the British accent who had said he was in charge when they had picked up the first delivery along the Orinoco. “Welcome to our little operation.”
He shook hands all around and then came to stop in front of her.
“Niklas Pederson.” He did the whole holding-her-hand-too-long thing that so many guys thought was charming. His face was oddly round when compared to his lean frame, making him look like a bobblehead doll of himself.
“Melissa Moore,” she responded, “and I’ll take my hand back unless you want Richie, my senior pilot, to shoot you.”
He kept both her hand and his smile. “I would not suggest that. I am very well protected here.” He nodded behind them. She didn’t bother to look.
Instead, she heard Richie pull his sidearm. “I’ll start with something they won’t mind, like your balls.” His MP-443 Grach swung into her peripheral vision, aimed at Niklas’s crotch. Whether that was her warrior or he was just being a soldier following her lead, she didn’t care. The effect was the same.
She made no comment.
Niklas raised an eyebrow, like a bad imitation of Spock on his round face.
Richie snapped the fingers of his free hand, and she heard the rest of the team shift into action. In moments there were a series of grunts, bodies slamming to hard earth, and the clatter of weapons being disarmed with a slippery drop of magazines and the sharp clack of cleared chambers.
Not a single shot was fired.
Melissa didn’t look away from the man’s eyes for a moment.
Niklas released her hand without any further comment.
Richie reholstered his sidearm, indicating that there were no longer any threats.
“We’re here to fly, Mr. Pederson. But it’s been a very long day, starting with the booby trap set by your Ms. Sala and then some question as to who would take final possession of the delivery. Are you going to keep screwing around, or are you going to tell us where we can get some sleep?”
His voice remained calm and smooth as if he was a hotel concierge, not a drug merchant who had just lost the first round of a power game. “We have reserved the DC-3 for your exclusive use. I hope that you find the accommodations comfortable. We work at night here and they’re serving breakfast right now.” He waved his hand toward the mess tent where others were gathering.
She nodded her acceptance. Not a problem; Delta was used to nighttime operations.
“Your team will be flying tomorrow night. I hope that you all join me for dinner at oh-five-hundred. I will be in my office.” He waved a hand toward a plane parked at the far end of the field. Pederson stalked off without further pleasantries.
“Walks like you just rammed a stick up his butt,” Carla observed from close beside her.
“Nice job on that,” Kyle agreed.
“Girl’s got some moxie,” Chad rumbled and Duane offered an “Uh-huh,” in reply.
“Hard not to be impressed.” Richie was looking downfield. “He has a BAe 146-100 for a private office.”
Carla just rolled her eyes in exasperation and Melissa tried not to giggle; it was so typically Richie to be having a different conversation from everyone around him.
“Can you imagine piloting that blind through the opening in the jungle?” Richie was on a roll. “That’s a four-engine, seventy-seat, regional jet that could load up to seventy passengers and all of their baggage. It’s good at short-field operations, typically under four thousand feet, depending on the load of course. But still, it can—”
Melissa couldn’t stand it any longer; he was just too cute. She grabbed him and pulled him into a kiss. Caught mid-sentence, it didn’t take him but a moment to shift them straight into a mid-kiss. Quick response to changing circumstances—another Delta trait to appreciate.
“Is that the secret to get a kiss like that?” Chad asked, though she could barely hear him through the buzzing in her ears. “Just be a total fucking dweeb? Really?”
Melissa pulled back enough to look Richie in the face because at the rate of climb that kiss was taking, they were going to be making love very shortly, right here along the runway. As a distraction, she struggled to answer Chad, surprised by his sudden approachability.
“It works on him. It helps that Richie actually is a total nerd.”
“No, he isn’t.”
Oh no. Was he still going to put down everything she did?
“He’s a total fucking nerd…or he will be soon if we can get you two somewhere private.”
Oh. Maybe Chad’s attitude was shifting. Then she noticed how brightly Richie blushed. Despite that, her warrior kept his hands tight around her waist and Melissa was forced to agree with Chad’s assessment, definitely something she looked forward to very soon.
“Let’s go.” Kyle changed the topic and reached out to pop open the Twin Otter’s baggage compartment and pull out his duffel.
Richie glanced across the runway and then blushed a little brighter.
“What?”
“Oh.” He smiled at her hungrily. “I was just wondering if there were any private quarters on our DC-3.”
* * *
The team entered the inside of the crashed DC-3’s fuselage through the rear cargo door. Richie expected to find any empty cargo bay and some bedrolls.
Instead, the inside had been totally renovated from whatever disreputable past it might have had when it was still operational. The interior was six feet wide, the same high, and about thirty long. It was filled with a scattering of couches and chairs of fine-furniture quality, and they looked upscale and inviting. The interior of the fuselage had been painted a warm gold and the deck had been planked with a dark hardwood. It was beyond comfortable. He’d have to rate it as luxurious, better than either the Bahamian resort or the first Maracaibo hotel, despite the fuselage’s seven-foot diameter.
And if he didn’t get Melissa down on one of those couches very soon, he was going to blow a blood vessel.
“Cozy.” Chad dumped his bag on the floor. “I’m starving. Who else wants to get some food?”
As fast as they’d arrived, they were departing again. Richie couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten and started to follow even if that wasn’t what his body was thinking.
He was a step from the door back onto the packed dirt, but Carla was now blocking his way.
“We’ll bring you back something in a couple hours,” Carla declared. Then she closed the cargo door in his face with a heavy clang. Then the clunk and thud of the door interlock being thrown, latching the door safely for flight.
He had to stare at the door for a long moment before he figured out what had just happened. He was in a room, alone with Melissa—an extremely comfortable room.
About time!
Richie almost gave out a joyous whoop as he turned
to her, except he was alone in the DC-3’s cabin. Couches, chairs, small fold-up tables…and no Meli—
Then he spotted the doorway to the cockpit. Except the partition wall was a couple yards closer than it should have been.
The doorway stood open but the area beyond was too dim to see clearly.
He moved forward cautiously and peered in.
The console and steering yokes were still in place, but the pilot’s chairs had been removed. The broad windshields were curtained with a rich green velvet. The insides of the metal hull—sides and ceiling—had been finished in deeply-grained Parota wood with natural variation from tan to a walnut red brown, creating a nest of pure luxury. Drug runners had way too much money.
A king-size mattress filled all but a few inches of the cockpit. By the light of a small brass lantern, the dark blue sheets were fresh and shiny with a satin sheen—which draped so perfectly over the body lying between them that he could see every outline. There wasn’t a single one of those perfect curves that was interrupted by the least scrap of clothing. He could see the tiny lump of the doubloon perched between the exquisite mounds of her breasts.
Melissa. No, this wasn’t Melissa Moore from Canada. Nor Melissa The Cat, Delta Force operator.
This was his Ilsa, watching him through sparkling blue eyes, her sunshine hair spread across the dark pillow. It was where she belonged, in this impossible nest of pure luxury.
He tried to speak, but his throat had gone dry.
It was barely an autonomic motion as he closed the cockpit door and began undressing. He knelt on the bed and looked down at her.
How had he ever ended up with someone so beautiful?
“Are you planning to touch me anytime soon?”
She shifted beneath the thin sheet which offered him new shapes and terrain to admire.
* * *
Richie reached out so slowly to touch her that she thought she’d scream before he closed the gap. He didn’t reach for crotch or breast, but instead rested his hand on her waist at the first rise of her hip, exactly where it had been minutes ago as she’d kissed him beside the parked Tin Goose.
Then he leaned down and, nudging the medallion aside, rested his ear between her breasts.
The intimacy of the simple gesture through the thin sheet was incredible—the only contact, his hand on her waist and his ear over pounding heart.
That’s what he was doing, listening to her heart. She’d wager that he was memorizing the sound of every valve opening and closing and how the blood rushed through and probably the oxygen content as it did so and—it was leaving her breathless.
She brushed a hand through his hair as he lay there and listened. This wasn’t about sex, not any longer. If he had come in and jumped her as she’d been hoping, it would have been…might have been. But he lay there and listened to her heart until she too could feel it changing and shifting.
And it was doing it in ways she wasn’t ready for.
With the least twist beneath the covers, she shifted his mouth to her breast and his hand from her hip to between her legs.
Then more than her heart shifted.
Richie also shifted, right out of the gentle nerd.
In moments he had her pinned beneath the sheets. His hand and mouth suddenly hard against her. Not brutal or painful—oh god no—they felt way too good for that. He was suddenly so intense that it overwhelmed her senses.
He used the slickness of the sheet to stoke and entice. Had she been a frozen glacier at the heart of the Antarctic ice shield, she’d still have melted. She didn’t go from frozen to thawed. She went from impatient to ecstatic.
But the warrior didn’t merely take as he had in the shower. The nameless warrior coaxed her reactions forth. She had never been so controlled yet had no desire to escape. Her body’s least reaction was noticed, enhanced until she was shivering with the power of it.
Richie’s gentlest caresses demanded response. His focus so complete that she could probably drop a flashbang down his shorts and he wouldn’t notice—if he’d been wearing shorts.
Judging perfectly when she was on the edge of madness, he slid the sheet off her. Then instead of finally taking her and giving them both the release she so desperately wanted, he rocked back on his heels and studied her once again.
“I’m not some sculpture to be admired.”
He nodded once, but still didn’t move.
She almost called his name, but something made her hesitate. If she did, would the warrior remain, or would Richie reappear? She really needed the warrior right now. She needed to feel this man needing her as desperately as she needed him.
As if reading her mind, he slid on some protection and spread her legs with the lightest brush of fingertips on thigh. A growl sounded deep in his throat and echoed about the inside of the DC-3’s finely finished interior.
Then he was on her. In the shower he’d taken her with a desperate need; now he revealed a desperate need to please—no—to satisfy her.
The warrior didn’t have to prove he was the best lover; he simply was. He took her on an upward flight that including barrel rolls, Immelmann turns, and soaring climbs without a single stall in between. She’d heard about people who couldn’t remember a traumatic accident or even the weeks leading up to it. If she forgot a single second of this ride, she was going to take her psyche out and shoot it.
At first she was able to give back as good as she got. But Richie ultimately overwhelmed her until all she could do was hang on and go for the ride. Her cry and his groan roared into the cabin space, and she didn’t care if everyone in the whole airfield could hear it through the plane’s hull.
When she thought she had no more to give, that’s when Richie slid into her and expanded her horizons exponentially. When their peaks slammed through her, there was silence in the cabin. Too big for words, it was also too for any sound. Nothing to distract from the pure pleasure.
When he finally had eased them both back to a soft landing, Richie rolled them over so that she lay on the beautiful, perfect chest of his.
With a happy sigh he held her tightly against him and knew that he’d been right; this was the best place she’d ever been as well.
“So, Richard,” she put on her best Ingrid Bergman voice. “Instead of Bogey’s line, ‘We’ll always have Paris,’ we’ll be able to say, ‘Well, sweetheart, we’ll always have the cockpit of that smashed DC-3 in the drug-runner’s camp in a hole in the Venezuelan jungle.’”
Richie’s grunt of amusement told her that the warrior was still in place. Or perhaps it was Melissa The Cat’s immense sexual prowess.
She liked that idea, soldier to soldier.
Well, perhaps it was time she took on this operator lying prone beneath her.
She started with nuzzling his neck and worked her way down to explore that wonderful chest. By the time her breasts were over his hips, Richie groaned with returning need.
His recovery time was spectacular, though his speech centers still lagged far behind.
Conquering the warrior was almost as much fun as being conquered by him. Each time he tried to touch her, she brushed aside his hands. Ilsa was the one in control here—as powerful as Bergman should have been if she’d truly wanted her Rick—she orchestrated every sensation. Melissa tasted and teased and stroked until the mighty warrior had his hands fisted hard in the sheets and his body writhed at her merest action.
When she finally took him in, finished him off, and pinned him with her body until he was completely spent, he could do no more than shudder and moan.
Melissa remained straddled over Richie’s hips and watched him. He reached up to brush a hand over her cheek, down to press the doubloon lightly against her breastbone for a moment, then he slipped toward sleep.
“No longer a welcher,” she whispered softly so as not to disturb. He had just delivered on his prom
ise times ten.
He slid into an even deeper sleep, every last bit of him finally relaxing.
She, in turn, had never felt more awake in her life.
Chapter 17
“I’ve seen that look in the mirror before.” Carla’s greeting when Melissa slipped out of the DC-3’s rear door would have made her jump if she didn’t feel so kindly toward the world at large. “That’s a good look.”
“I—” she opened her mouth and then had no idea what she was going to say. She was spared further foolishness by the Gulfstream jet on the far side of the runway whining to life. She hoped it didn’t wake Richie. Actually, at the moment, she doubted that anything—other than a call to arms—had any chance of disturbing him.
It taxied down the center of the runway until it reached the far end. Then with a sleek roar of engines, it bolted down the runway, keeping its nose down longer than she expected; then with a quick motion, the plane shot skyward.
She could see the moment it disappeared through the jungle’s canopy, still invisible in the night. One moment she was looking at the hot exhaust of the twin jet engines, and the next it blinked out as the plane moved out of the narrow view afforded by the hole in the jungle’s canopy.
“Richie will be sorry he missed seeing that.”
“He’ll have his chance. This is a busy place.” Carla slipped an arm through Melissa’s and they set out walking together like two friends strolling down a city sidewalk. “Perhaps you missed the other two departures and three arrivals while you were occupied.”
“Hmm.” She had, but could only offer a happy hum of satisfaction.
“So talk.”
Melissa laughed.
“Care to let me in on the joke?”
“I don’t even know where to begin.” She waved a hand at the line of shattered aircraft that lined this section of the field. Most of them looked like the battered toys of a particularly rough three-year-old. “This place, you, Richie, me.”
“Well, that’s specific,” Carla teased.
“See, there. That’s part of it. Here I am walking arm in arm with Carla Effing Anderson. As recently as a week ago I’d have laid down a month’s pay that would never ever happen under any circumstances.”
Heart Strike Page 24
